In other news, I’ve recorded myself performing at open mics a few times lately, but I’m mostly focusing on uploading JoCo Cruise footage first. I did, however, upload this video of myself performing Mike Phirman‘s song Chicken Monkey Duck:

It’s always a crowd pleaser, and this video also pleased Mike Phirman himself, so that’s great. He deserves to be pleased!

I’m wearing an official Back to the Future hat that I bought from Universal Studios in the year 2015 (the future!) and some leggings made with Chicken Monkey Duck fabric designed by Jade Gordon specifically to go with the song.

On the subject of merchandise, I’ve made my They Might Not Be Giants poster available on Teechip, as that seems to give a better price and shipping than the other platforms it’s on. Ignore the ‘Last day to order’ warning; the campaign restarts automatically. But hey, do order soon if you want to get the poster soon. That’s how causality works, you see.

I’ve also finally started a Bandcamp page — everybody else is doing it, so why can’t I? Right now it just has my ‘Why I Perform at Open Mics‘ rap, but I intend to add many of the other recordings that have been either on The FuMP Sideshow or my long-neglected podcast, just as soon as I gather together lossless versions of everything. The podcast was a pain to update, and I think Bandcamp will be a much easier way for people to find and download all of my recordings.

I’ll also add the recording of They Might Not Be Giants I did for the poster video, and any further recordings of poems, raps, or robot choir or even human-choir songs that I happen to make. Some might feature my musical friends. Most, if not all, will be pay-what-you-like. If you want to know as soon as I add anything, click the ‘Follow’ button on my shiny new bandcamp. Do you have a favourite poem of mine that you’d like a recording of? Let me know, and maybe I’ll make one.

A while ago I wrote a poem called I Love Your Body, about some reasons to love a person’s body that aren’t superficial. Then Joey sang it, because his body can do that. Here’s what could be considered either a parody or a continuation of that poem, illustrating what can happen if you do treat someone’s body like a piece of meat:

I love your body
The way it feels like silk
The way it looks good naked
The way it smells like your perfume
The way it tastes so good in a casserole

I don’t love its flaws
The way its flesh resists my knife
The way its bones don’t decompose
The way it won’t fit in my freezer
The way its leftovers putrefied, and made my neighbour suspicious, and she tipped off the police, and there was a highly publicised trial, and now I’m in prison for life

But I love
that you had it
so that I could have you,
because brains need energy
and there’s no KFC
with home delivery.

I love your body
I hope to hold it forever
and think of you
with a love-filled belly.

∎

So… yeah. That’s a thing I wrote. It may be related to repeated exposure to Tom Lehrer’s ‘I Hold Your Hand in Mine’ recently. It’s based in fact, though; my freezer is very small.

Well, it’s Global Poetry Writing Month again. I can’t promise to blog a poem every day, but I have a few I prepared earlier. Here’s one called Negative Return, which I wrote in 2015 in order to have an excuse to wear my flight suit on stage. It’s about a Space Shuttle launch, or a breakup, or a breakup in which the person breaking up with you is leaving in a Space Shuttle (my preferred way of breaking up with someone.) It was inspired by something a tour guide at Kennedy Space Center said, which I happened to record audio of.

This particular performance is from the open mic on the 2018 JoCo Cruise, even though on the JoCo Cruise, no excuse is needed to wear a flight suit at any time.

I’ve performed it a few times in Vienna, with slightly different wording, though I’d never actually posted about it here before. Here’s a playlist of the recorded versions of it.

I watched a speech by by Haben Girma yesterday, and as she was talking about making things accessible to people with disabilities and how that can lead to usefulness and innovations beyond accessibility, I decided to write a quick parody of James Blunt’s ‘Beautiful’ about accessibility. Here are the lyrics. They don’t always match the original tune exactly, but rather an approximation of it I have in my head from listening to parodies such as The Amateur Transplants’ Beautiful Song, Weird Al’s You’re Pitiful, and James Blunt’s own My Triangle. Feel free to come up with your own additions to include other aspects of accessibility or other things which could be more accessible.

My widget’s brilliant

My venue’s brilliant
Of that I’m sure
For all the people
I don’t ignore

I met someone who was different
And I knew I’d undershot
‘Cause I thought my plans were brilliant
and they were not

Accessible
Accessible
Accessible to all
To learn or say, in a different way
When one sense is essential
It makes sense to overhaul

So I fixed my stuff
It was not enough
I met more folk who tried and they still
found it tough
And I don’t think I can accommodate
But I have a goal now and I will innovate

Accessible
Accessible
Accessible to all
To simply manoeuvre, no matter how we move
Paralysed or pained or small
Still our movement shall not fall

la la la la…

Accessible
Accessible
Accessible to all
And the gains are shared with the unimpaired
Till there’s nothing that seems impossible

If you see, hear, feel the call
Make some tools; tear down a wall.

∎

Of course, I can’t publish lyrics to a song about accessibility without mentioning The Accessibility Song by James Dempsey. If you didn’t like mine, try his, now also available along with his other songs about Cocoa development on iTunes:

I’ve actually seen the original song ‘Beautiful’ performed live, since I randomly went to a James Blunt concert with some co-workers the very first time I was in Vienna. However, even then, I did not really listen to the words. I did while writing this, and realised just how weird and creepy it is. The protagonist is not telling his partner she’s beautiful, as a casual listener might assume, but rather singing to a woman he caught a glimpse of once on a train as if she were some great lost love, despite the fact that they never spoke to each other and she was already involved with someone. It’s essentially Jackson Park Express, presented as a romantic short film rather than a feature-length comedy. With songs like this out there, no wonder random guys on the street sometimes think they can follow me home!

Unrelated to all this, Joey Marianer has once again sung some words I wrote! This time it’s A Few Things You’ll Need for the Cruise, slightly changed to be about the fact that there was, at the time of publishing, exactly one month until JoCo Cruise 2018. There is now less than a month, but still room for you to join us!

Like this:

This is a parody of Jonathan Coulton’s ‘Glasses’ from the album ‘Artificial Heart’. I started writing it some time ago and decided it was about time I finished it. Feel free to sing it if that’s a thing you can do!

Check the bedside stand
Check my own right hand
Check I’m not going blind to what’s hiding in plain sight

Shake the blankets out
Find some old self-doubt
Never finding the the clarity abandoned late last night

I had them then, don’t know where they are
I’ll check again, mountains and morasses
Without a lens, can’t see near or far
I can’t see
I can’t find my glasses.

Check atop my head,
The small-print book I read,
Check the corner where they never are and never ought to be.

I’m careful where I step
Watch the floor except
It’s all a blur, a crude moving blotch of who knows what to me

I had them then, don’t know where they are
I’ll check again, mountains and morasses
Without a lens, can’t see near or far
I can’t see…

Not their usual place
Not here on my face
I know they’re bound to be somewhere I’ve already looked three times.

Find my old car keys
The old futilities
A cat’s fresh leavings, a Lego brick, a quarter and three dimes.

I had them then, don’t know where they are
I’ll check again, mountains and morasses
Without a lens, can’t see near or far
I had them then, don’t know where they are
I’ll check again, mountains and morasses
Without a lens, can’t see near or far
I can’t see
I can’t find my glasses.

Like this:

The other day I was reading some developer documentation about nodes while I had Jonathan Coulton’s ‘Sunshine’ from the album ‘Solid State’ in my head. ‘The road we’re on’ became ‘the node we’re on’ and the next thing I know I’m writing a parody about the runtime, and errors that could have been detected by the compiler in other languages or with stricter compiler settings but instead aren’t detected until runtime. I didn’t end up using the ‘node’ line. The first verse barely needed changing, so for fun I tried to keep as many words from the original as I could in the rest of the parody as well. Whether that’s a good thing depends on your taste and how well you know the original. Feel free to sing it if that’s a thing you can do!

We were blind to every sign
That we should have seen
In a clearly broken line
Machine to machine
Our mistakes were the future
But no one could tell

Lots of errors to detect
The tests didn’t show
The things compilers could have checked
We just let it go
Walked away as assumptions
Crumbled and fell

We bust our arse
To find the errors the machine could parse
Catch it just-in-time
Here in the runtime

Cast the pointer to a type it’s not (runtime)
Walk the edge case of the code we’ve got (runtime)

Every bit was filed away
There’s memory to fill
There’s no message that could say
Receiver is nil
We don’t heed any warnings
Try it and bail

Cast from Any type to this
The object’s a tease
Reflect to find out what it is
A sudden unease
If the data’s corrupt
Then when did it fail?

We soldier on (just a flesh wound)
Heap space and registers are almost gone (memory use ballooned)
Watch the stack unwind (maybe we’re doomed)
Here in the runtime

Cast the pointer to a type it’s not (runtime)
Walk the edge case of the code we’ve got (runtime)

The caller of the method must not do this
Everything’s your fault, you have been remiss
Code is fine, the world has something amiss

All the tests have slipped away
Just garbage I/O
I won’t last another day
And neither will O
EOF of a stateless mutable thing

The data’s blitzed (blame the new hire)
There’s nothing left that can remember it (cut the red wire)
But this is fine (halt and catch fire)
Here in the runtime

Cast the pointer to a type it’s not (runtime)
Walk the edge case of the code we’ve got (runtime)

Cast the pointer to a type it’s not (runtime)
Walk the edge case of the code we’ve got (runtime)

∎

I’m not so sure about ‘EOF of a stateless mutable thing’ and whether it would be better stateful or immutable. It doesn’t exactly make sense (does anything, when it’s that far gone?) but it sounds cool, and a lot like the original. I’ll release it like this and patch it in production if necessary. 😉

It’s difficult to choose from more than 2000 videos, but probably not as difficult as choosing from all the photos on Flickr. I tried to choose a variety of different kinds of videos, while also including my favourite ones, the most popular ones, some of my original work rather than only recordings of other people doing cool things, and some that just happened to fit into the rhyme or rhythm of the song. Where relevant I’ve linked to each video within a playlist (e.g. of a concert), so if you like a video you can see more like it. Sometimes there’s more than one link per line.

Like this:

Some people call Easter Sunday Zombie Jesus Day, and I’ve just recently spent a fair bit of time editing footage of a song about zombies, so it seemed natural to write this parody of Jonathan Coulton’s Re: Your Brains about Jesus. In this song, Jesus, omniscient yet somehow clueless, talks to [the cadaver of] someone who was crucified along with him.

Bless you, man, it’s Jesus,
from the cross just over there.
Good to see you buddy, how’ve you been?
Things have been okay for me; I’ve come back as a zombie now.
I really wish you could’ve seen.

I think I speak for all of us when I say I understand
how it can be bothersome to be hung up by your hands.
But not all dead must die — I’ve got friends in high places.
All you’ve got to do is leave your grave.
it’s not unreasonable;
you can’t always acquiesce to things.
All you’ve got to do is leave your grave.
You’ve got eternal life; don’t just spend it festering.
You just open up the tomb,
shed your doom and gloom
and leave your grave.

I don’t want to nitpick, Man, but is this really your plan?
Spend your death spoilt rotten underground?
Maybe that’s okay for now, but someday there’ll be worms inside your butt
and you’ll have to come around.
I’m not surprised to see you act like you don’t have a prayer.
You always played the victim with that heavy cross to bear,
but we’ve all been crucified, and I will bring the light to you.

All you’ve got to do is leave your grave.
it’s not unreasonable;
you can’t always acquiesce to things.
All you’ve got to do is leave your grave.
You’ve got eternal life; don’t just spend it festering.
You just open up the tomb,
shed your doom and gloom
and leave your grave.

I’d like to help you, Man, in any way I can.
You know I help the ones who help themselves, believe me
I’m no Messiah though, well, technically I am.
I guess I am.

Got to get ascending now, think I’ll pass on passing on.
I’ve got too much to do to rest in peace
Then I’ll put a word in to my father who’s been with you all along.
I’m sure he’ll help with your decease.
I’m glad to see you take my death and life advice so well
Thank you for not whining; helping others feels so swell
and I’m sure you’ll conquer death
when you take a breath; try it!

All you’ve got to do is leave your grave.
it’s not unreasonable;
you can’t always acquiesce to things.
All you’ve got to do is leave your grave.
You’ve got eternal life; don’t just spend it festering.
You just open up the tomb,
shed your doom and gloom
and leave your grave.

∎

I’m not sure if this is Jesus being a total son-of-a-self to a guy who is literally dead, by not acknowledging the son-of-God privilege that makes his resurrection possible, or whether He’s actually encouraging everyone to make friends with His dad and gain eternal life. Interpret it whichever way you prefer. In any case, this is dedicated to anyone who’s been told to just get out of bed and smile/pray their way out of depression, chronic illness, poverty, etc.

I’m not sure I’m 100% happy with these lyrics yet; I probably stick needlessly close to the original lyrics in places, when I could have been cramming in additional puns. I have a few alternate possibilities, but these are the words I like best right as it turns Sunday in my time zone.

Here’s the aforementioned footage of the original song, as performed in Loreto, Mexico as part of JoCo Cruise:

Also, Joey recorded another ukulele song in response to my last post! Here it is:

In response, I wrote the following:

Who is this cool person called joeym
who responds to my post with a poem
and then adds on a singing addendum?
If I hadn’t already, I’d friend’im!

Tune in next post for the next exciting instalment of ‘Angela and Joey have conversations via poems and ukulele songs’!

You might recall that I was a fan juror on the Logan Whitehurst Memorial Awards for Excellence in Comedy Music this year. Well, the winners were announced at FuMPFeST, as I watched via video stream. The winner of ‘Outstanding Parody Song’, after a tie with Weird Al Yankovic was broken by Dr. Demento, was Devo Spice (featuring Power Salad) with the song ‘Snack Bar‘. That song is a parody of ‘Thrift Shop‘, by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, but the first thing I thought of when I saw the title was Radiohead’s ‘Black Star‘. So the day after the awards, I wrote a Black Star parody about the temptingly-convenient yet unhealthy snack bar that I heard was available at FuMPFeST. It’s probably about time I posted it. I haven’t recorded it, because singing isn’t really a thing I do, but here are the words:

I have to admit that after con I’m not as fit as what I
think I might’ve been.
I know that the food I eat does not have lots of vitamins.
Look at the plight I’m in.

Look horrified, I mean.
Blame it on the snack bar.
Blame it on the processed food.
Blame it on the multitude of junk at hand.

A snack in mouth, and a snack in hand, I try to understand what I’m eating for.
I know that I am full, but I still treat myself, my self that I am treating poor.
I eat not needing more.
I can’t fight greed anymore.

Blame it on the snack bar.
Blame it on the processed food.
Blame it on the pulchritude of starch and fat.

I get in the line and I just stand about now that food is made for me.
I see it displayed and I just salivate; I want the food pureed for me.
Is it too late for me?
I’ve gotta cut down.

Blame it on the snack bar.
Blame it on the processed food.
Blame it on the pulchritude of junk at hand.

Like this:

Recently I had the honour of being a fan juror for the Logan Whitehurst Memorial Awards for Excellence in Comedy Music (Logan Awards for short.) It was great to finally have an important reason to listen to comedy music for several full days, and a response to the eye-rolling of my friends when I mentioned yet another funny song, although deciding which songs to vote for was pretty tough. As a juror I had to listen to or watch all the songs and music videos nominated by the general public, and choose my favourite five nominees in each category. I can’t tell you which ones I voted for, but the finalists (chosen based on the votes of all the jurors, with ties broken by Dr. Demento) have been announced. Since the page on the Logan Awards site doesn’t link to the songs in question, I thought I’d link to them here. In alphabetical order:

The winners will be announced at FuMPFest on 5—7 June in Wheeling, Illinois. If you like funny music and are anywhere near there, I recommend going; it sounds like great fun. Many comedy musicians will be there, including guests of honour The Arrogant Worms. I saw some of the same performers and fans at the MarsCon 2014 dementia track, and it was a blast.

If you’re a Paul and Storm fan, you might be wondering why no songs from their 2014 album Ball Pit are in the finals. Some of their songs were nominated in the open nominations, but they became ineligible for the award when Paul Sabourin joined the jury. In honour of Paul’s noble sacrifice, I present to you a nominated video of this song of theirs which would have made the judging harder for me, if only because of all the freeze-framing to see the details: